What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the civil service?
The biggest strength of the Civil Service is its people - not just on the big headline projects, but the people who do some of the most amazing things to deliver front line services every day. The Civil Service brand and the hugely diverse, challenging career opportunities, allows it to attract the best talent.
For example, the Civil Service Fast Stream is one of the most popular and competitive graduate schemes in the UK and is consistently rated in the Top 10 in the Times Top 100 list of Graduate Recruiters.
To build the high performing teams capable of meeting our nation's challenges, the Civil Service and political leaders need to continue to re-establish and outwardly project mutual respect and confidence. The Civil Service also needs to become more agile and better connected globally as governments become more dynamic and global in their outlook.
What is the biggest misconception about the civil service among professional services?
People who work with civil servants understand them and the environment pretty well. Among others there is a misconception that the civil service can only learn from the private sector. I'd say that some of the best innovation is in the civil service but it's just not always spread effectively.
It’s been really great to see the work of the Whitehall & Industry Group, which paired 13 Permanent Secretaries with senior business leaders, from businesses such as Waitrose and National Grid, and the positive feedback it received.
The exercise highlighted just how similar the challenges are, and how much they can learn from each other.
Also, some of the most demanding, stretching and satisfying projects we undertake aren’t just with businesses and corporations, but in Government and there are really some talented and motivated people providing professional services to Government.
Over the past couple of years, a joint EY and Ministry of Defence team have been working together to reduce defence inventory purchasing by £1bn without any reduction in operational capability – returning these savings to the public purse.
In your opinion, how could partnership working between government and business be improved?
It needs to be joined up with clear mutual objectives and benefits, and be supported by the entire organisation. There is sometimes too much sensitivity around understanding each other for fear of commercial advantage. You can't get an effective partnership without mutual understanding and that means getting close to each other.
What is the most inspiring government project that you have been involved in, and why?
It is difficult not to be touched by projects that are near to you and as a father of two young children, I was particularly inspired by the dedication of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) team in tackling one of the most challenging problems in our increasingly connected society.
I met with Peter Davies, the former CEO of CEOP, and he was a pioneer for bringing industry expertise to the work they were doing. We sat down together and he talked me through exactly what they were trying to do and we agreed to contribute by providing secondees, who were experts in problem solving and project management.
We helped CEOP redesign their system for sending out alerts for missing young people, which resulted in reducing the time taken for alerts to be issued – this made a huge difference in their work.